** Edgar Allan Poe **
(1850)
THERE IS, strictly speaking, but little similarity between this sketchy trifle and the very celebrated and very beautiful "Moon-story" of Mr. Locke- but as both have the character of hoaxes, (although one is in the tone of banter, the other of downright earnest) and as both hoaxes are on the same subject, the moon- the author of "Hans Phaall" thinks it necessary to say, in self-defence, that his own jeu-d'esprit was published, in the Southern Literary Messenger, about three weeks previously to the appearance of Mr. L's in the New York "Sun." Fancying a similarity which does not really exist, some of the New York papers copied "Hans Phaall," and collated it with the Hoax- with the view of detecting the writer of the one in the writer of the other.
By late accounts from Rotterdam, that city
seems to be in a high state of philosophical excitement.
Indeed, phenomena have there occurred of a nature so completely
unexpected- so entirely novel- so utterly at variance with
preconceived opinions- as to leave no doubt on my mind that
long ere this all Europe is in an uproar, all physics in a
ferment, all reason and astronomy together by the ears. date),
a vast crowd of people, for purposes not specifically
mentioned, were assembled in the great square of the Exchange
in the well-conditioned city of Rotterdam. The day was warm-
unusually so for the season- there was hardly a breath of air
stirring; and the multitude were in no bad humor at being now
and then besprinkled with friendly showers of momentary
duration, that fell from large white masses of cloud which
chequered in a fitful manner the blue vault of the firmament.
Nevertheless, about noon, a slight but remarkable agitation
became apparent in the assembly: the clattering of ten thousand
tongues succeeded; and, in an instant afterward, ten thousand
faces were upturned toward the heavens, ten thousand pipes
descended simultaneously from the corners of ten thousand
mouths, and a shout, which could be compared to nothing but the
roaring of Niagara, resounded long, loudly, and furiously,
through all the environs of Rotterdam.
The origin of this hubbub soon became sufficiently
evident. From behind the huge bulk of one of those
sharply-defined masses of cloud already mentioned, was seen
slowly to emerge into an open area of blue space, a queer,
heterogeneous, but apparently solid substance, so oddly shaped,
so whimsically put together, as not to be in any manner
comprehended, and never to be sufficiently admired, by the host
of sturdy burghers who stood open-mouthed below. What could it
be? In the name of all the vrows and devils in Rotterdam, what
could it possibly portend? No one knew, no one could imagine;
no one- not even the burgomaster Mynheer Superbus Von Underduk-
had the slightest clew by which to unravel the mystery; so, as
nothing more reasonable could be done, every one to a man
replaced his pipe carefully in the corner of his mouth, and
cocking up his right eye towards the phenomenon, puffed,
paused, waddled about, and grunted significantly- then waddled
back, grunted, paused, and finally- puffed again.
In the meantime, however, lower and still lower
toward the goodly city, came the object of so much curiosity,
and the cause of so much smoke. In a very few minutes it
arrived near enough to be accurately discerned. It appeared to
be- yes! it was undoubtedly a species of balloon; but surely no
such balloon had ever been seen in Rotterdam before. For who,
let me ask, ever heard of a balloon manufactured entirely of
dirty newspapers? No man in Holland certainly; yet here, under
the very noses of the people, or rather at some distance above
their noses was the identical thing in question, and composed,
I have it on the best authority, of the precise material which
no one had ever before known to be used for a similar purpose.
It was an egregious insult to the good sense of the burghers of
Rotterdam. As to the shape of the phenomenon, it was even still
more reprehensible. Being little or nothing better than a huge
foolscap turned upside down. And this similitude was regarded
as by no means lessened when, upon nearer inspection, there was
perceived a large tassel depending from its apex, and, around
the upper rim or base of the cone, a circle of little
instruments, resembling sheep-bells, which kept up a continual
tinkling to the tune of Betty Martin. But still worse.
Suspended by blue ribbons to the end of this fantastic machine,
there hung, by way of car, an enormous drab beaver bat, with a
brim superlatively broad, and a hemispherical crown with a
black band and a silver buckle. It is, however, somewhat
remarkable that many citizens of Rotterdam swore to having seen
the same hat repeatedly before; and indeed the whole assembly
seemed to regard it with eyes of familiarity; while the vrow
Grettel Phaall, upon sight of it, uttered an exclamation of
joyful surprise, and declared it to be the identical hat of her
good man himself. Now this was a circumstance the more to be
observed, as Phaall, with three companions, had actually
disappeared from Rotterdam about five years before, in a very
sudden and unaccountable manner, and up to the date of this
narrative all attempts had failed of obtaining any intelligence
concerning them whatsoever. To be sure, some bones which were
thought to be human, mixed up with a quantity of odd-looking
rubbish, had been lately discovered in a retired situation to
the east of Rotterdam, and some people went so far as to
imagine that in this spot a foul murder had been committed, and
that the sufferers were in all probability Hans Phaall and his
associates. But to return.
The balloon (for such no doubt it was) had now
descended to within a hundred feet of the earth, allowing the
crowd below a sufficiently distinct view of the person of its
occupant. This was in truth a very droll little somebody. He
could not have been more than two feet in height; but this
altitude, little as it was, would have been sufficient to
destroy his equilibrium, and tilt him over the edge of his tiny
car, but for the intervention of a circular rim reaching as
high as the breast, and rigged on to the cords of the balloon.
The body of the little man was more than proportionately broad,
giving to his entire figure a rotundity highly absurd. His
feet, of course, could not be seen at all, although a horny
substance of suspicious nature was occasionally protruded
through a rent in the bottom of the car, or to speak more
properly, in the top of the hat. His hands were enormously
large. His hair was extremely gray, and collected in a cue
behind. His nose was prodigiously long, crooked, and
inflammatory; his eyes full, brilliant, and acute; his chin and
cheeks, although wrinkled with age, were broad, puffy, and
double; but of ears of any kind or character there was not a
semblance to be discovered upon any portion of his head. This
odd little gentleman was dressed in a loose surtout of sky-blue
satin, with tight breeches to match, fastened with silver
buckles at the knees. His vest was of some bright yellow
material; a white taffety cap was set jauntily on one side of
his head; and, to complete his equipment, a blood-red silk
handkerchief enveloped his throat, and fell down, in a dainty
manner, upon his bosom, in a fantastic bow-knot of
super-eminent dimensions.
Having descended, as I said before, to about one
hundred feet from the surface of the earth, the little old
gentleman was suddenly seized with a fit of trepidation, and
appeared disinclined to make any nearer approach to terra
firma. Throwing out, therefore, a quantity of sand from a
canvas bag, which, he lifted with great difficulty, he became
stationary in an instant. He then proceeded, in a hurried and
agitated manner, to extract from a side-pocket in his surtout a
large morocco pocket-book. This he poised suspiciously in his
hand, then eyed it with an air of extreme surprise, and was
evidently astonished at its weight. He at length opened it, and
drawing there from a huge letter sealed with red sealing-wax
and tied carefully with red tape, let it fall precisely at the
feet of the burgomaster, Superbus Von Underduk. His Excellency
stooped to take it up. But the aeronaut, still greatly
discomposed, and having apparently no farther business to
detain him in Rotterdam, began at this moment to make busy
preparations for departure; and it being necessary to discharge
a portion of ballast to enable him to reascend, the half dozen
bags which he threw out, one after another, without taking the
trouble to empty their contents, tumbled, every one of them,
most unfortunately upon the back of the burgomaster, and rolled
him over and over no less than one-and-twenty times, in the
face of every man in Rotterdam. It is not to be supposed,
however, that the great Underduk suffered this impertinence on
the part of the little old man to pass off with impunity. It is
said, on the contrary, that during each and every one of his
one-and twenty circumvolutions he emitted no less than
one-and-twenty distinct and furious whiffs from his pipe, to
which he held fast the whole time with all his might, and to
which he intends holding fast until the day of his death.
In the meantime the balloon arose like a lark,
and, soaring far away above the city, at length drifted quietly
behind a cloud similar to that from which it had so oddly
emerged, and was thus lost forever to the wondering eyes of the
good citiezns of Rotterdam. All attention was now directed to
the letter, the descent of which, and the consequences
attending thereupon, had proved so fatally subversive of both
person and personal dignity to his Excellency, the illustrious
Burgomaster Mynheer Superbus Von Underduk. That functionary,
however, had not failed, during his circumgyratory movements,
to bestow a thought upon the important subject of securing the
packet in question, which was seen, upon inspection, to have
fallen into the most proper hands, being actually addressed to
himself and Professor Rub-a-dub, in their official capacities
of President and Vice-President of the Rotterdam College of
Astronomy. It was accordingly opened by those dignitaries upon
the spot, and found to contain the following extraordinary, and
indeed very serious, communications.
To their Excellencies Von Underduk and Rub-a-dub, President and Vice-President of the States' College of Astronomers, in the city of Rotterdam.
Your Excellencies may perhaps be able to
remember an humble artizan, by name Hans Phaall, and by
occupation a mender of bellows, who, with three others,
disappeared from Rotterdam, about five years ago, in a manner
which must have been considered by all parties at once sudden,
and extremely unaccountable. If, however, it so please your
Excellencies, I, the writer of this communication, am the
identical Hans Phaall himself. It is well known to most of my
fellow citizens, that for the period of forty years I continued
to occupy the little square brick building, at the head of the
alley called Sauerkraut, in which I resided at the time of my
disappearance. My ancestors have also resided therein time out
of mind- they, as well as myself, steadily following the
respectable and indeed lucrative profession of mending of
bellows. For, to speak the truth, until of late years, that the
heads of all the people have been set agog with politics, no
better business than my own could an honest citizen of
Rotterdam either desire or deserve. Credit was good, employment
was never wanting, and on all hands there was no lack of either
money or good-will. But, as I was saying, we soon began to feel
the effects of liberty and long speeches, and radicalism, and
all that sort of thing. People who were formerly, the very best
customers in the world, had now not a moment of time to think
of us at all. They had, so they said, as much as they could do
to read about the revolutions, and keep up with the march of
intellect and the spirit of the age. If a fire wanted fanning,
it could readily be fanned with a newspaper, and as the
government grew weaker, I have no doubt that leather and iron
acquired durability in proportion, for, in a very short time,
there was not a pair of bellows in all Rotterdam that ever
stood in need of a stitch or required the assistance of a
hammer. This was a state of things not to be endured. I soon
grew as poor as a rat, and, having a wife and children to
provide for, my burdens at length became intolerable, and I
spent hour after hour in reflecting upon the most convenient
method of putting an end to my life. Duns, in the meantime,
left me little leisure for contemplation. My house was
literally besieged from morning till night, so that I began to
rave, and foam, and fret like a caged tiger against the bars of
his enclosure. There were three fellows in particular who
worried me beyond endurance, keeping watch continually about my
door, and threatening me with the law. Upon these three I
internally vowed the bitterest revenge, if ever I should be so
happy as to get them within my clutches; and I believe nothing
in the world but the pleasure of this anticipation prevented me
from putting my plan of suicide into immediate execution, by
blowing my brains out with a blunderbuss. I thought it best,
however, to dissemble my wrath, and to treat them with promises
and fair words, until, by some good turn of fate, an
opportunity of vengeance should be afforded me.
One day, having given my creditors the slip, and
feeling more than usually dejected, I continued for a long time
to wander about the most obscure streets without object
whatever, until at length I chanced to stumble against the
corner of a bookseller's stall. Seeing a chair close at hand,
for the use of customers, I threw myself doggedly into it, and,
hardly knowing why, opened the pages of the first volume which
came within my reach. It proved to be a small pamphlet treatise
on Speculative Astronomy, written either by Professor Encke of
Berlin or by a Frenchman of somewhat similar name. I had some
little tincture of information on matters of this nature, and
soon became more and more absorbed in the contents of the book,
reading it actually through twice before I awoke to a
recollection of what was passing around me. By this time it
began to grow dark, and I directed my steps toward home. But
the treatise had made an indelible impression on my mind, and,
as I sauntered along the dusky streets, I revolved carefully
over in my memory the wild and sometimes unintelligible
reasonings of the writer. There are some particular passages
which affected my imagination in a powerful and extraordinary
manner. The longer I meditated upon these the more intense grew
the interest which had been excited within me. The limited
nature of my education in general, and more especially my
ignorance on subjects connected with natural philosophy, so far
from rendering me diffident of my own ability to comprehend
what I had read, or inducing me to mistrust the many vague
notions which had arisen in consequence, merely served as a
farther stimulus to imagination; and I was vain enough, or
perhaps reasonable enough, to doubt whether those crude ideas
which, arising in ill-regulated minds, have all the appearance,
may not often in effect possess all the force, the reality, and
other inherent properties, of instinct or intuition; whether,
to proceed a step farther, profundity itself might not, in
matters of a purely speculative nature, be detected as a
legitimate source of falsity and error. In other words, I
believed, and still do believe, that truth, is frequently of
its own essence, superficial, and that, in many cases, the
depth lies more in the abysses where we seek her, than in the
actual situations wherein she may be found. Nature herself
seemed to afford me corroboration of these ideas. In the
contemplation of the heavenly bodies it struck me forcibly that
I could not distinguish a star with nearly as much precision,
when I gazed on it with earnest, direct and undeviating
attention, as when I suffered my eye only to glance in its
vicinity alone. I was not, of course, at that time aware that
this apparent paradox was occasioned by the center of the
visual area being less susceptible of feeble impressions of
light than the exterior portions of the retina. This knowledge,
and some of another kind, came afterwards in the course of an
eventful five years, during which I have dropped the prejudices
of my former humble situation in life, and forgotten the
bellows-mender in far different occupations. But at the epoch
of which I speak, the analogy which a casual observation of a
star offered to the conclusions I had already drawn, struck me
with the force of positive conformation, and I then finally
made up my mind to the course which I afterwards pursued.
It was late when I reached home, and I went
immediately to bed. My mind, however, was too much occupied to
sleep, and I lay the whole night buried in meditation. Arising
early in the morning, and contriving again to escape the
vigilance of my creditors, I repaired eagerly to the
bookseller's stall, and laid out what little ready money I
possessed, in the purchase of some volumes of Mechanics and
Practical Astronomy. Having arrived at home safely with these,
I devoted every spare moment to their perusal, and soon made
such proficiency in studies of this nature as I thought
sufficient for the execution of my plan. In the intervals of
this period, I made every endeavor to conciliate the three
creditors who had given me so much annoyance. In this I finally
succeeded- partly by selling enough of my household furniture
to satisfy a moiety of their claim, and partly by a promise of
paying the balance upon completion of a little project which I
told them I had in view, and for assistance in which I
solicited their services. By these means- for they were
ignorant men- I found little difficulty in gaining them over to
my purpose.
Matters being thus arranged, I contrived, by the
aid of my wife and with the greatest secrecy and caution, to
dispose of what property I had remaining, and to borrow, in
small sums, under various pretences, and without paying any
attention to my future means of repayment, no inconsiderable
quantity of ready money. With the means thus accruing I
proceeded to procure at intervals, cambric muslin, very fine,
in pieces of twelve yards each; twine; a lot of the varnish of
caoutchouc; a large and deep basket of wicker-work, made to
order; and several other articles necessary in the construction
and equipment of a balloon of extraordinary dimensions. This I
directed my wife to make up as soon as possible, and gave her
all requisite information as to the particular method of
proceeding. In the meantime I worked up the twine into a
net-work of sufficient dimensions; rigged it with a hoop and
the necessary cords; bought a quadrant, a compass, a spy-glass,
a common barometer with some important modifications, and two
astronomical instruments not so generally known. I then took
opportunities of conveying by night, to a retired situation
east of Rotterdam, five iron-bound casks, to contain about
fifty gallons each, and one of a larger size; six tinned ware
tubes, three inches in diameter, properly shaped, and ten feet
in length; a quantity of a particular metallic substance, or
semi-metal, which I shall not name, and a dozen demijohns of a
very common acid. The gas to be formed from these latter
materials is a gas never yet generated by any other person than
myself- or at least never applied to any similar purpose. The
secret I would make no difficulty in disclosing, but that it of
right belongs to a citizen of Nantz, in France, by whom it was
conditionally communicated to myself. The same individual
submitted to me, without being at all aware of my intentions, a
method of constructing balloons from the membrane of a certain
animal, through which substance any escape of gas was nearly an
impossibility. I found it, however, altogether too expensive,
and was not sure, upon the whole, whether cambric muslin with a
coating of gum caoutchouc, was not equally as good. I mention
this circumstance, because I think it probable that hereafter
the individual in question may attempt a balloon ascension with
the novel gas and material I have spoken of, and I do not wish
to deprive him of the honor of a very singular invention.
On the spot which I intended each of the smaller
casks to occupy respectively during the inflation of the
balloon, I privately dug a hole two feet deep; the holes
forming in this manner a circle twenty-five feet in diameter.
In the centre of this circle, being the station designed for
the large cask, I also dug a hole three feet in depth. In each
of the five smaller holes, I deposited a canister containing
fifty pounds, and in the larger one a keg holding one hundred
and fifty pounds, of cannon powder. These- the keg and
canisters- I connected in a proper manner with covered trains;
and having let into one of the canisters the end of about four
feet of slow match, I covered up the hole, and placed the cask
over it, leaving the other end of the match protruding about an
inch, and barely visible beyond the cask. I then filled up the
remaining holes, and placed the barrels over them in their
destined situation.
Besides the articles above enumerated, I conveyed
to the depot, and there secreted, one of M. Grimm's
improvements upon the apparatus for condensation of the
atmospheric air. I found this machine, however, to require
considerable alteration before it could be adapted to the
purposes to which I intended making it applicable. But, with
severe labor and unremitting perseverance, I at length met with
entire success in all my preparations. My balloon was soon
completed. It would contain more than forty thousand cubic feet
of gas; would take me up easily, I calculated, with all my
implements, and, if I managed rightly, with one hundred and
seventy-five pounds of ballast into the bargain. It had
received three coats of varnish, and I found the cambric muslin
to answer all the purposes of silk itself, quite as strong and
a good deal less expensive.
Everything being now ready, I exacted from my wife
an oath of secrecy in relation to all my actions from the day
of my first visit to the bookseller's stall; and promising, on
my part, to return as soon as circumstances would permit, I
gave her what little money I had left, and bade her farewell.
Indeed I had no fear on her account. She was what people call a
notable woman, and could manage matters in the world without my
assistance. I believe, to tell the truth, she always looked
upon me as an idle boy, a mere make-weight, good for nothing
but building castles in the air, and was rather glad to get rid
of me. It was a dark night when I bade her good-bye, and taking
with me, as aides-de-camp, the three creditors who had given me
so much trouble, we carried the balloon, with the car and
accoutrements, by a roundabout way, to the station where the
other articles were deposited. We there found them all
unmolested, and I proceeded immediately to business.
It was the first of April. The night, as I said
before, was dark; there was not a star to be seen; and a
drizzling rain, falling at intervals, rendered us very
uncomfortable. But my chief anxiety was concerning the balloon,
which, in spite of the varnish with which it was defended,
began to grow rather heavy with the moisture; the powder also
was liable to damage. I therefore kept my three duns working
with great diligence, pounding down ice around the central
cask, and stirring the acid in the others. They did not cease,
however, importuning me with questions as to what I intended to
do with all this apparatus, and expressed much dissatisfaction
at the terrible labor I made them undergo. They could not
perceive, so they said, what good was likely to result from
their getting wet to the skin, merely to take a part in such
horrible incantations. I began to get uneasy, and worked away
with all my might, for I verily believe the idiots supposed
that I had entered into a compact with the devil, and that, in
short, what I was now doing was nothing better than it should
be. I was, therefore, in great fear of their leaving me
altogether. I contrived, however, to pacify them by promises of
payment of all scores in full, as soon as I could bring the
present business to a termination. To these speeches they gave,
of course, their own interpretation; fancying, no doubt, that
at all events I should come into possession of vast quantities
of ready money; and provided I paid them all I owed, and a
trifle more, in consideration of their services, I dare say
they cared very little what became of either my soul or my
carcass.
In about four hours and a half I found the balloon
sufficiently inflated. I attached the car, therefore, and put
all my implements in it- not forgetting the condensing
apparatus, a copious supply of water, and a large quantity of
provisions, such as pemmican, in which much nutriment is
contained in comparatively little bulk. I also secured in the
car a pair of pigeons and a cat. It was now nearly daybreak,
and I thought it high time to take my departure. Dropping a
lighted cigar on the ground, as if by accident, I took the
opportunity, in stooping to pick it up, of igniting privately
the piece of slow match, whose end, as I said before, protruded
a very little beyond the lower rim of one of the smaller casks.
This manoeuvre was totally unperceived on the part of the three
duns; and, jumping into the car, I immediately cut the single
cord which held me to the earth, and was pleased to find that I
shot upward, carrying with all ease one hundred and
seventy-five pounds of leaden ballast, and able to have carried
up as many more.
Scarcely, however, had I attained the height of
fifty yards, when, roaring and rumbling up after me in the most
horrible and tumultuous manner, came so dense a hurricane of
fire, and smoke, and sulphur, and legs and arms, and gravel,
and burning wood, and blazing metal, that my very heart sunk
within me, and I fell down in the bottom of the car, trembling
with unmitigated terror. Indeed, I now perceived that I had
entirely overdone the business, and that the main consequences
of the shock were yet to be experienced. Accordingly, in less
than a second, I felt all the blood in my body rushing to my
temples, and immediately thereupon, a concussion, which I shall
never forget, burst abruptly through the night and seemed to
rip the very firmament asunder. When I afterward had time for
reflection, I did not fail to attribute the extreme violence of
the explosion, as regarded myself, to its proper cause- my
situation directly above it, and in the line of its greatest
power. But at the time, I thought only of preserving my life.
The balloon at first collapsed, then furiously expanded, then
whirled round and round with horrible velocity, and finally,
reeling and staggering like a drunken man, hurled me with great
force over the rim of the car, and left me dangling, at a
terrific height, with my head downward, and my face outwards,
by a piece of slender cord about three feet in length, which
hung accidentally through a crevice near the bottom of the
wicker-work, and in which, as I fell, my left foot became most
providentially entangled. It is impossible- utterly impossible-
to form any adequate idea of the horror of my situation. I
gasped convulsively for breath- a shudder resembling a fit of
the ague agitated every nerve and muscle of my frame- I felt my
eyes starting from their sockets- a horrible nausea overwhelmed
me- and at length I fainted away.
How long I remained in this state it is impossible
to say. It must, however, have been no inconsiderable time, for
when I partially recovered the sense of existence, I found the
day breaking, the balloon at a prodigious height over a
wilderness of ocean, and not a trace of land to be discovered
far and wide within the limits of the vast horizon. My
sensations, however, upon thus recovering, were by no means so
rife with agony as might have been anticipated. Indeed, there
was much of incipient madness in the calm survey which I began
to take of my situation. I drew up to my eyes each of my hands,
one after the other, and wondered what occurrence could have
given rise to the swelling of the veins, and the horrible
blackness of the fingemails. I afterward carefully examined my
head, shaking it repeatedly, and feeling it with minute
attention, until I succeeded in satisfying myself that it was
not, as I had more than half suspected, larger than my balloon.
Then, in a knowing manner, I felt in both my breeches pockets,
and, missing therefrom a set of tablets and a toothpick case,
endeavored to account for their disappearance, and not being
able to do so, felt inexpressibly chagrined. It now occurred to
me that I suffered great uneasiness in the joint of my left
ankle, and a dim consciousness of my situation began to glimmer
through my mind. But, strange to say! I was neither astonished
nor horror-stricken. If I felt any emotion at all, it was a
kind of chuckling satisfaction at the cleverness I was about to
display in extricating myself from this dilemma; and I never,
for a moment, looked upon my ultimate safety as a question
susceptible of doubt. For a few minutes I remained wrapped in
the profoundest meditation. I have a distinct recollection of
frequently compressing my lips, putting my forefinger to the
side of my nose, and making use of other gesticulations and
grimaces common to men who, at ease in their arm-chairs,
meditate upon matters of intricacy or importance. Having, as I
thought, sufficiently collected my ideas, I now, with great
caution and deliberation, put my hands behind my back, and
unfastened the large iron buckle which belonged to the
waistband of my inexpressibles. This buckle had three teeth,
which, being somewhat rusty, turned with great difficulty on
their axis. I brought them, however, after some trouble, at
right angles to the body of the buckle, and was glad to find
them remain firm in that position. Holding the instrument thus
obtained within my teeth, I now proceeded to untie the knot of
my cravat. I had to rest several times before I could
accomplish this manoeuvre, but it was at length accomplished.
To one end of the cravat I then made fast the buckle, and the
other end I tied, for greater security, tightly around my
wrist. Drawing now my body upwards, with a prodigious exertion
of muscular force, I succeeded, at the very first trial, in
throwing the buckle over the car, and entangling it, as I had
anticipated, in the circular rim of the wicker-work.
My body was now inclined towards the side of the
car, at an angle of about forty-five degrees; but it must not
be understood that I was therefore only forty-five degrees
below the perpendicular. So far from it, I still lay nearly
level with the plane of the horizon; for the change of
situation which I had acquired, had forced the bottom of the
car considerably outwards from my position, which was
accordingly one of the most imminent and deadly peril. It
should be remembered, however, that when I fell in the first
instance, from the car, if I had fallen with my face turned
toward the balloon, instead of turned outwardly from it, as it
actually was; or if, in the second place, the cord by which I
was suspended had chanced to hang over the upper edge, instead
of through a crevice near the bottom of the car,- I say it may
be readily conceived that, in either of these supposed cases, I
should have been unable to accomplish even as much as I had now
accomplished, and the wonderful adventures of Hans Phaall would
have been utterly lost to posterity, I had therefore every
reason to be grateful; although, in point of fact, I was still
too stupid to be anything at all, and hung for, perhaps, a
quarter of an hour in that extraordinary manner, without making
the slightest farther exertion whatsoever, and in a singularly
tranquil state of idiotic enjoyment. But this feeling did not
fail to die rapidly away, and thereunto succeeded horror, and
dismay, and a chilling sense of utter helplessness and ruin. In
fact, the blood so long accumulating in the vessels of my head
and throat, and which had hitherto buoyed up my spirits with
madness and delirium, had now begun to retire within their
proper channels, and the distinctness which was thus added to
my perception of the danger, merely served to deprive me of the
self-possession and courage to encounter it. But this weakness
was, luckily for me, of no very long duration. In good time
came to my rescue the spirit of despair, and, with frantic
cries and struggles, I jerked my way bodily upwards, till at
length, clutching with a vise-like grip the long-desired rim, I
writhed my person over it, and fell headlong and shuddering
within the car.
It was not until some time afterward that I
recovered myself sufficiently to attend to the ordinary cares
of the balloon. I then, however, examined it with attention,
and found it, to my great relief, uninjured. My implements were
all safe, and, fortunately, I had lost neither ballast nor
provisions. Indeed, I had so well secured them in their places,
that such an accident was entirely out of the question. Looking
at my watch, I found it six o'clock. I was still rapidly
ascending, and my barometer gave a present altitude of three
and three-quarter miles. Immediately beneath me in the ocean,
lay a small black object, slightly oblong in shape, seemingly
about the size, and in every way bearing a great resemblance to
one of those childish toys called a domino. Bringing my
telescope to bear upon it, I plainly discerned it to be a
British ninety four-gun ship, close-hauled, and pitching
heavily in the sea with her head to the W.S.W. Besides this
ship, I saw nothing but the ocean and the sky, and the sun,
which had long arisen.
It is now high time that I should explain to your
Excellencies the object of my perilous voyage. Your
Excellencies will bear in mind that distressed circumstances in
Rotterdam had at length driven me to the resolution of
committing suicide. It was not, however, that to life itself I
had any, positive disgust, but that I was harassed beyond
endurance by the adventitious miseries attending my situation.
In this state of mind, wishing to live, yet wearied with life,
the treatise at the stall of the bookseller opened a resource
to my imagination. I then finally made up my mind. I determined
to depart, yet live- to leave the world, yet continue to exist-
in short, to drop enigmas, I resolved, let what would ensue, to
force a passage, if I could, to the moon. Now, lest I should be
supposed more of a madman than I actually am, I will detail, as
well as I am able, the considerations which led me to believe
that an achievement of this nature, although without doubt
difficult, and incontestably full of danger, was not
absolutely, to a bold spirit, beyond the confines of the
possible.
The moon's actual distance from the earth was the
first thing to be attended to. Now, the mean or average
interval between the centres of the two planets is 59.9643 of
the earth's equatorial radii, or only about 237,000 miles. I
say the mean or average interval. But it must be borne in mind
that the form of the moon's orbit being an ellipse of
eccentricity amounting to no less than 0.05484 of the major
semi-axis of the ellipse itself, and the earth's centre being
situated in its focus, if I could, in any manner, contrive to
meet the moon, as it were, in its perigee, the above mentioned
distance would be materially diminished. But, to say nothing at
present of this possibility, it was very certain that, at all
events, from the 237,000 miles I would have to deduct the
radius of the earth, say 4,000, and the radius of the moon, say
1080, in all 5,080, leaving an actual interval to be traversed,
under average circumstances, of 231,920 miles. Now this, I
reflected, was no very extraordinary distance. Travelling on
land has been repeatedly accomplished at the rate of thirty
miles per hour, and indeed a much greater speed may be
anticipated. But even at this velocity, it would take me no
more than 322 days to reach the surface of the moon. There
were, however, many particulars inducing me to believe that my
average rate of travelling might possibly very much exceed that
of thirty miles per hour, and, as these considerations did not
fail to make a deep impression upon my mind, I will mention
them more fully hereafter.
The next point to be regarded was a matter of far
greater importance. From indications afforded by the barometer,
we find that, in ascensions from the surface of the earth we
have, at the height of 1,000 feet, left below us about
one-thirtieth of the entire mass of atmospheric air, that at
10,600 we have ascended through nearly one-third; and that at
18,000, which is not far from the elevation of Cotopaxi, we
have surmounted one-half the material, or, at all events,
one-half the ponderable, body of air incumbent upon our globe.
It is also calculated that at an altitude not exceeding the
hundredth part of the earth's diameter- that is, not exceeding
eighty miles- the rarefaction would be so excessive that animal
life could in no manner be sustained, and, moreover, that the
most delicate means we possess of ascertaining the presence of
the atmosphere would be inadequate to assure us of its
existence. But I did not fail to perceive that these latter
calculations are founded altogether on our experimental
knowledge of the properties of air, and the mechanical laws
regulating its dilation and compression, in what may be called,
comparatively speaking, the immediate vicinity of the earth
itself; and, at the same time, it is taken for granted that
animal life is and must be essentially incapable of
modification at any given unattainable distance from the
surface. Now, all such reasoning and from such data must, of
course, be simply analogical. The greatest height ever reached
by man was that of 25,000 feet, attained in the aeronautic
expedition of Messieurs Gay-Lussac and Biot. This is a moderate
altitude, even when compared with the eighty miles in question;
and I could not help thinking that the subject admitted room
for doubt and great latitude for speculation.
But, in point of fact, an ascension being made to
any given altitude, the ponderable quantity of air surmounted
in any farther ascension is by no means in proportion to the
additional height ascended (as may be plainly seen from what
has been stated before), but in a ratio constantly decreasing.
It is therefore evident that, ascend as high as we may, we
cannot, literally speaking, arrive at a limit beyond which no
atmosphere is to be found. It must exist, I argued; although it
may exist in a state of infinite rarefaction.
On the other hand, I was aware that arguments have
not been wanting to prove the existence of a real and definite
limit to the atmosphere, beyond which there is absolutely no
air whatsoever. But a circumstance which has been left out of
view by those who contend for such a limit seemed to me,
although no positive refutation of their creed, still a point
worthy very serious investigation. On comparing the intervals
between the successive arrivals of Encke's comet at its
perihelion, after giving credit, in the most exact manner, for
all the disturbances due to the attractions of the planets, it
appears that the periods are gradually diminishing; that is to
say, the major axis of the comet's ellipse is growing shorter,
in a slow but perfectly regular decrease. Now, this is
precisely what ought to be the case, if we suppose a resistance
experienced from the comet from an extremely rare ethereal
medium pervading the regions of its orbit. For it is evident
that such a medium must, in retarding the comet's velocity,
increase its centripetal, by weakening its centrifugal force.
In other words, the sun's attraction would be constantly
attaining greater power, and the comet would be drawn nearer at
every revolution. Indeed, there is no other way of accounting
for the variation in question. But again. The real diameter of
the same comet's nebulosity is observed to contract rapidly as
it approaches the sun, and dilate with equal rapidity in its
departure towards its aphelion. Was I not justifiable in
supposing with M. Valz, that this apparent condensation of
volume has its origin in the compression of the same ethereal
medium I have spoken of before, and which is only denser in
proportion to its solar vicinity? The lenticular-shaped
phenomenon, also called the zodiacal light, was a matter worthy
of attention. This radiance, so apparent in the tropics, and
which cannot be mistaken for any meteoric lustre, extends from
the horizon obliquely upward, and follows generally the
direction of the sun's equator. It appeared to me evidently in
the nature of a rare atmosphere extending from the sun outward,
beyond the orbit of Venus at least, and I believed indefinitely
farther.* Indeed, this medium I could not suppose confined to
the path of the comet's ellipse, or to the immediate
neighborhood of the sun. It was easy, on the contrary, to
imagine it pervading the entire regions of our planetary
system, condensed into what we call atmosphere at the planets
themselves, and perhaps at some of them modified by
considerations, so to speak, purely geological.
*The zodiacal light is probably what the ancients called Trabes. Emicant Trabes quos docos vocant.- Pliny, lib. 2, p. 26.
Having adopted this view of the subject, I had
little further hesitation. Granting that on my passage I should
meet with atmosphere essentially the same as at the surface of
the earth, I conceived that, by means of the very ingenious
apparatus of M. Grimm, I should readily be enabled to condense
it in sufficient quantity for the purposes of respiration. This
would remove the chief obstacle in a journey to the moon. I had
indeed spent some money and great labor in adapting the
apparatus to the object intended, and confidently looked
forward to its successful application, if I could manage to
complete the voyage within any reasonable period. This brings
me back to the rate at which it might be possible to
travel.
It is true that balloons, in the first stage of
their ascensions from the earth, are known to rise with a
velocity comparatively moderate. Now, the power of elevation
lies altogether in the superior lightness of the gas in the
balloon compared with the atmospheric air; and, at first sight,
it does not appear probable that, as the balloon acquires
altitude, and consequently arrives successively in atmospheric
strata of densities rapidly diminishing- I say, it does not
appear at all reasonable that, in this its progress upwards,
the original velocity should be accelerated. On the other hand,
I was not aware that, in any recorded ascension, a diminution
was apparent in the absolute rate of ascent; although such
should have been the case, if on account of nothing else, on
account of the escape of gas through balloons ill-constructed,
and varnished with no better material than the ordinary
varnish. It seemed, therefore, that the effect of such escape
was only sufficient to counterbalance the effect of some
accelerating power. I now considered that, provided in my
passage I found the medium I had imagined, and provided that it
should prove to be actually and essentially what we denominate
atmospheric air, it could make comparatively little difference
at what extreme state of rarefaction I should discover it- that
is to say, in regard to my power of ascending- for the gas in
the balloon would not only be itself subject to rarefaction
partially similar (in proportion to the occurrence of which, I
could suffer an escape of so much as would be requisite to
prevent explosion), but, being what it was, would, at all
events, continue specifically lighter than any compound
whatever of mere nitrogen and oxygen. In the meantime, the
force of gravitation would be constantly diminishing, in
proportion to the squares of the distances, and thus, with a
velocity prodigiously accelerating, I should at length arrive
in those distant regions where the force of the earth's
attraction would be superseded by that of the moon. In
accordance with these ideas, I did not think it worth while to
encumber myself with more provisions than would be sufficient
for a period of forty days.
There was still, however, another difficulty,
which occasioned me some little disquietude. It has been
observed, that, in balloon ascensions to any considerable
height, besides the pain attending respiration, great
uneasiness is experienced about the head and body, often
accompanied with bleeding at the nose, and other symptoms of an
alarming kind, and growing more and more inconvenient in
proportion to the altitude attained.* This was a reflection of
a nature somewhat startling. Was it not probable that these
symptoms would increase indefinitely, or at least until
terminated by death itself? I finally thought not. Their origin
was to be looked for in the progressive removal of the
customary atmospheric pressure upon the surface of the body,
and consequent distention of the superficial blood-vessels- not
in any positive disorganization of the animal system, as in the
case of difficulty in breathing, where the atmospheric density
is chemically insufficient for the due renovation of blood in a
ventricle of the heart. Unless for default of this renovation,
I could see no reason, therefore, why life could not be
sustained even in a vacuum; for the expansion and compression
of chest, commonly called breathing, is action purely muscular,
and the cause, not the effect, of respiration. In a word, I
conceived that, as the body should become habituated to the
want of atmospheric pressure, the sensations of pain would
gradually diminish- and to endure them while they continued, I
relied with confidence upon the iron hardihood of my
constitution.
*Since the original publication of Hans Phaall, I find that Mr. Green, of Nassau balloon notoriety, and other late aeronauts, deny the assertions of Humboldt, in this respect, and speak of a decreasing inconvenience,- precisely in accordance with the theory here urged in a mere spirit of banter.
Thus, may it please your Excellencies, I have
detailed some, though by no means all, the considerations which
led me to form the project of a lunar voyage. I shall now
proceed to lay before you the result of an attempt so
apparently audacious in conception, and, at all events, so
utterly unparalleled in the annals of mankind.
Having attained the altitude before mentioned,
that is to say three miles and three-quarters, I threw out from
the car a quantity of feathers, and found that I still ascended
with sufficient rapidity; there was, therefore, no necessity
for discharging any ballast. I was glad of this, for I wished
to retain with me as much weight as I could carry, for reasons
which will be explained in the sequel. I as yet suffered no
bodily inconvenience, breathing with great freedom, and feeling
no pain whatever in the head. The cat was lying very demurely
upon my coat, which I had taken off, and eyeing the pigeons
with an air of nonchalance. These latter being tied by the leg,
to prevent their escape, were busily employed in picking up
some grains of rice scattered for them in the bottom of the
car.
At twenty minutes past six o'clock, the barometer
showed an elevation of 26,400 feet, or five miles to a
fraction. The prospect seemed unbounded. Indeed, it is very
easily calculated by means of spherical geometry, what a great
extent of the earth's area I beheld. The convex surface of any
segment of a sphere is, to the entire surface of the sphere
itself, as the versed sine of the segment to the diameter of
the sphere. Now, in my case, the versed sine- that is to say,
the thickness of the segment beneath me- was about equal to my
elevation, or the elevation of the point of sight above the
surface. "As five miles, then, to eight thousand," would
express the proportion of the earth's area seen by me. In other
words, I beheld as much as a sixteen-hundredth part of the
whole surface of the globe. The sea appeared unruffled as a
mirror, although, by means of the spy-glass, I could perceive
it to be in a state of violent agitation. The ship was no
longer visible, having drifted away, apparently to the
eastward. I now began to experience, at intervals, severe pain
in the head, especially about the ears- still, however,
breathing with tolerable freedom. The cat and pigeons seemed to
suffer no inconvenience whatsoever.
At twenty minutes before seven, the balloon
entered a long series of dense cloud, which put me to great
trouble, by damaging my condensing apparatus and wetting me to
the skin. This was, to be sure, a singular recontre, for I had
not believed it possible that a cloud of this nature could be
sustained at so great an elevation. I thought it best, however,
to throw out two five-pound pieces of ballast, reserving still
a weight of one hundred and sixty-five pounds. Upon so doing, I
soon rose above the difficulty, and perceived immediately, that
I had obtained a great increase in my rate of ascent. In a few
seconds after my leaving the cloud, a flash of vivid lightning
shot from one end of it to the other, and caused it to kindle
up, throughout its vast extent, like a mass of ignited and
glowing charcoal. This, it must be remembered, was in the broad
light of day. No fancy may picture the sublimity which might
have been exhibited by a similar phenomenon taking place amid
the darkness of the night. Hell itself might have been found a
fitting image. Even as it was, my hair stood on end, while I
gazed afar down within the yawning abysses, letting imagination
descend, as it were, and stalk about in the strange vaulted
halls, and ruddy gulfs, and red ghastly chasms of the hideous
and unfathomable fire. I had indeed made a narrow escape. Had
the balloon remained a very short while longer within the
cloud- that is to say- had not the inconvenience of getting
wet, determined me to discharge the ballast, inevitable ruin
would have been the consequence. Such perils, although little
considered, are perhaps the greatest which must be encountered
in balloons. I had by this time, however, attained too great an
elevation to be any longer uneasy on this head.
I was now rising rapidly, and by seven o'clock the
barometer indicated an altitude of no less than nine miles and
a half. I began to find great difficulty in drawing my breath.
My head, too, was excessively painful; and, having felt for
some time a moisture about my cheeks, I at length discovered it
to be blood, which was oozing quite fast from the drums of my
ears. My eyes, also, gave me great uneasiness. Upon passing the
hand over them they seemed to have protruded from their sockets
in no inconsiderable degree; and all objects in the car, and
even the balloon itself, appeared distorted to my vision. These
symptoms were more than I had expected, and occasioned me some
alarm. At this juncture, very imprudently, and without
consideration, I threw out from the car three five-pound pieces
of ballast. The accelerated rate of ascent thus obtained,
carried me too rapidly, and without sufficient gradation, into
a highly rarefied stratum of the atmosphere, and the result had
nearly proved fatal to my expedition and to myself. I was
suddenly seized with a spasm which lasted for more than five
minutes, and even when this, in a measure, ceased, I could
catch my breath only at long intervals, and in a gasping
manner- bleeding all the while copiously at the nose and ears,
and even slightly at the eyes. The pigeons appeared distressed
in the extreme, and struggled to escape; while the cat mewed
piteously, and, with her tongue hanging out of her mouth,
staggered to and fro in the car as if under the influence of
poison. I now too late discovered the great rashness of which I
had been guilty in discharging the ballast, and my agitation
was excessive. I anticipated nothing less than death, and death
in a few minutes. The physical suffering I underwent
contributed also to render me nearly incapable of making any
exertion for the preservation of my life. I had, indeed, little
power of reflection left, and the violence of the pain in my
head seemed to be greatly on the increase. Thus I found that my
senses would shortly give way altogether, and I had already
clutched one of the valve ropes with the view of attempting a
descent, when the recollection of the trick I had played the
three creditors, and the possible consequences to myself,
should I return, operated to deter me for the moment. I lay
down in the bottom of the car, and endeavored to collect my
faculties. In this I so far succeeded as to determine upon the
experiment of losing blood. Having no lancet, however, I was
constrained to perform the operation in the best manner I was
able, and finally succeeded in opening a vein in my right arm,
with the blade of my penknife. The blood had hardly commenced
flowing when I experienced a sensible relief, and by the time I
had lost about half a moderate basin full, most of the worst
symptoms had abandoned me entirely. I nevertheless did not
think it expedient to attempt getting on my feet immediately;
but, having tied up my arm as well as I could, I lay still for
about a quarter of an hour. At the end of this time I arose,
and found myself freer from absolute pain of any kind than I
had been during the last hour and a quarter of my ascension.
The difficulty of breathing, however, was diminished in a very
slight degree, and I found that it would soon be positively
necessary to make use of my condenser. In the meantime, looking
toward the cat, who was again snugly stowed away upon my coat,
I discovered to my infinite surprise, that she had taken the
opportunity of my indisposition to bring into light a litter of
three little kittens. This was an addition to the number of
passengers on my part altogether unexpected; but I was pleased
at the occurrence. It would afford me a chance of bringing to a
kind of test the truth of a surmise, which, more than anything
else, had influenced me in attempting this ascension. I had
imagined that the habitual endurance of the atmospheric
pressure at the surface of the earth was the cause, or nearly
so, of the pain attending animal existence at a distance above
the surface. Should the kittens be found to suffer uneasiness
in an equal degree with their mother, I must consider my theory
in fault, but a failure to do so I should look upon as a strong
confirmation of my idea.
By eight o'clock I had actually attained an
elevation of seventeen miles above the surface of the earth.
Thus it seemed to me evident that my rate of ascent was not
only on the increase, but that the progression would have been
apparent in a slight degree even had I not discharged the
ballast which I did. The pains in my head and ears returned, at
intervals, with violence, and I still continued to bleed
occasionally at the nose; but, upon the whole, I suffered much
less than might have been expected. I breathed, however, at
every moment, with more and more difficulty, and each
inhalation was attended with a troublesome spasmodic action of
the chest. I now unpacked the condensing apparatus, and got it
ready for immediate use.
The view of the earth, at this period of my
ascension, was beautiful indeed. To the westward, the
northward, and the southward, as far as I could see, lay a
boundless sheet of apparently unruffled ocean, which every
moment gained a deeper and a deeper tint of blue and began
already to assume a slight appearance of convexity. At a vast
distance to the eastward, although perfectly discernible,
extended the islands of Great Britain, the entire Atlantic
coasts of France and Spain, with a small portion of the
northern part of the continent of Africa. Of individual
edifices not a trace could be discovered, and the proudest
cities of mankind had utterly faded away from the face of the
earth. From the rock of Gibraltar, now dwindled into a dim
speck, the dark Mediterranean sea, dotted with shining islands
as the heaven is dotted with stars, spread itself out to the
eastward as far as my vision extended, until its entire mass of
waters seemed at length to tumble headlong over the abyss of
the horizon, and I found myself listening on tiptoe for the
echoes of the mighty cataract. Overhead, the sky was of a jetty
black, and the stars were brilliantly visible.
The pigeons about this time seeming to undergo
much suffering, I determined upon giving them their liberty. I
first untied one of them, a beautiful gray-mottled pigeon, and
placed him upon the rim of the wicker-work. He appeared
extremely uneasy, looking anxiously around him, fluttering his
wings, and making a loud cooing noise, but could not be
persuaded to trust himself from off the car. I took him up at
last, and threw him to about half a dozen yards from the
balloon. He made, however, no attempt to descend as I had
expected, but struggled with great vehemence to get back,
uttering at the same time very shrill and piercing cries. He at
length succeeded in regaining his former station on the rim,
but had hardly done so when his head dropped upon his breast,
and be fell dead within the car. The other one did not prove so
unfortunate. To prevent his following the example of his
companion, and accomplishing a return, I threw him downward
with all my force, and was pleased to find him continue his
descent, with great velocity, making use of his wings with
ease, and in a perfectly natural manner. In a very short time
he was out of sight, and I have no doubt he reached home in
safety. Puss, who seemed in a great measure recovered from her
illness, now made a hearty meal of the dead bird and then went
to sleep with much apparent satisfaction. Her kittens were
quite lively, and so far evinced not the slightest sign of any
uneasiness whatever.
At a quarter-past eight, being no longer able to
draw breath without the most intolerable pain, I proceeded
forthwith to adjust around the car the apparatus belonging to
the condenser. This apparatus will require some little
explanation, and your Excellencies will please to bear in mind
that my object, in the first place, was to surround myself and
cat entirely with a barricade against the highly rarefied
atmosphere in which I was existing, with the intention of
introducing within this barricade, by means of my condenser, a
quantity of this same atmosphere sufficiently condensed for the
purposes of respiration. With this object in view I had
prepared a very strong perfectly air-tight, but flexible
gum-elastic bag. In this bag, which was of sufficient
dimensions, the entire car was in a manner placed. That is to
say, it (the bag) was drawn over the whole bottom of the car,
up its sides, and so on, along the outside of the ropes, to the
upper rim or hoop where the net-work is attached. Having pulled
the bag up in this way, and formed a complete enclosure on all
sides, and at botttom, it was now necessary to fasten up its
top or mouth, by passing its material over the hoop of the
net-work- in other words, between the net-work and the hoop.
But if the net-work were separated from the hoop to admit this
passage, what was to sustain the car in the meantime? Now the
net-work was not permanently fastened to the hoop, but attached
by a series of running loops or nooses. I therefore undid only
a few of these loops at one time, leaving the car suspended by
the remainder. Having thus inserted a portion of the cloth
forming the upper part of the bag, I refastened the loops- not
to the hoop, for that would have been impossible, since the
cloth now intervened- but to a series of large buttons, affixed
to the cloth itself, about three feet below the mouth of the
bag, the intervals between the buttons having been made to
correspond to the intervals between the loops. This done, a few
more of the loops were unfastened from the rim, a farther
portion of the cloth introduced, and the disengaged loops then
connected with their proper buttons. In this way it was
possible to insert the whole upper part of the bag between the
net-work and the hoop. It is evident that the hoop would now
drop down within the car, while the whole weight of the car
itself, with all its contents, would be held up merely by the
strength of the buttons. This, at first sight, would seem an
inadequate dependence; but it was by no means so, for the
buttons were not only very strong in themselves, but so close
together that a very slight portion of the whole weight was
supported by any one of them. Indeed, had the car and contents
been three times heavier than they were, I should not have been
at all uneasy. I now raised up the hoop again within the
covering of gum-elastic, and propped it at nearly its former
height by means of three light poles prepared for the occasion.
This was done, of course, to keep the bag distended at the top,
and to preserve the lower part of the net-work in its proper
situation. All that now remained was to fasten up the mouth of
the enclosure; and this was readily accomplished by gathering
the folds of the material together, and twisting them up very
tightly on the inside by means of a kind of stationary
tourniquet.
In the sides of the covering thus adjusted round
the car, had been inserted three circular panes of thick but
clear glass, through which I could see without difficulty
around me in every horizontal direction. In that portion of the
cloth forming the bottom, was likewise, a fourth window, of the
same kind, and corresponding with a small aperture in the floor
of the car itself. This enabled me to see perpendicularly down,
but having found it impossible to place any similar contrivance
overhead, on account of the peculiar manner of closing up the
opening there, and the consequent wrinkles in the cloth, I
could expect to see no objects situated directly in my zenith.
This, of course, was a matter of little consequence; for had I
even been able to place a window at top, the balloon itself
would have prevented my making any use of it.
About a foot below one of the side windows was a
circular opening, eight inches in diameter, and fitted with a
brass rim adapted in its inner edge to the windings of a screw.
In this rim was screwed the large tube of the condenser, the
body of the machine being, of course, within the chamber of
gum-elastic. Through this tube a quantity of the rare
atmosphere circumjacent being drawn by means of a vacuum
created in the body of the machine, was thence discharged, in a
state of condensation, to mingle with the thin air already in
the chamber. This operation being repeated several times, at
length filled the chamber with atmosphere proper for all the
purposes of respiration. But in so confined a space it would,
in a short time, necessarily become foul, and unfit for use
from frequent contact with the lungs. It was then ejected by a
small valve at the bottom of the car- the dense air readily
sinking into the thinner atmosphere below. To avoid the
inconvenience of making a total vacuum at any moment within the
chamber, this purification was never accomplished all at once,
but in a gradual manner- the valve being opened only for a few
seconds, then closed again, until one or two strokes from the
pump of the condenser had supplied the place of the atmosphere
ejected. For the sake of experiment I had put the cat and
kittens in a small basket, and suspended it outside the car to
a button at the bottom, close by the valve, through which I
could feed them at any moment when necessary. I did this at
some little risk, and before closing the mouth of the chamber,
by reaching under the car with one of the poles before
mentioned to which a hook had been attached.
By the time I had fully completed these
arrangements and filled the chamber as explained, it wanted
only ten minutes of nine o'clock. During the whole period of my
being thus employed, I endured the most terrible distress from
difficulty of respiration, and bitterly did I repent the
negligence or rather fool-hardiness, of which I had been
guilty, of putting off to the last moment a matter of so much
importance. But having at length accomplished it, I soon began
to reap the benefit of my invention. Once again I breathed with
perfect freedom and ease- and indeed why should I not? I was
also agreeably surprised to find myself, in a great measure,
relieved from the violent pains which had hitherto tormented
me. A slight headache, accompanied with a sensation of fulness
or distention about the wrists, the ankles, and the throat, was
nearly all of which I had now to complain. Thus it seemed
evident that a greater part of the uneasiness attending the
removal of atmospheric pressure had actually worn off, as I had
expected, and that much of the pain endured for the last two
hours should have been attributed altogether to the effects of
a deficient respiration.
At twenty minutes before nine o'clock- that is to
say, a short time prior to my closing up the mouth of the
chamber, the mercury attained its limit, or ran down, in the
barometer, which, as I mentioned before, was one of an extended
construction. It then indicated an altitude on my part of
132,000 feet, or five-and-twenty miles, and I consequently
surveyed at that time an extent of the earth's area amounting
to no less than the three hundred-and-twentieth part of its
entire superficies. At nine o'clock I had again lost sight of
land to the eastward, but not before I became aware that the
balloon was drifting rapidly to the N. N. W. The convexity of
the ocean beneath me was very evident indeed, although my view
was often interrupted by the masses of cloud which floated to
and fro. I observed now that even the lightest vapors never
rose to more than ten miles above the level of the sea.
At half past nine I tried the experiment of
throwing out a handful of feathers through the valve. They did
not float as I had expected; but dropped down perpendicularly,
like a bullet, en masse, and with the greatest velocity- being
out of sight in a very few seconds. I did not at first know
what to make of this extraordinary phenomenon; not being able
to believe that my rate of ascent had, of a sudden, met with so
prodigious an acceleration. But it soon occurred to me that the
atmosphere was now far too rare to sustain even the feathers;
that they actually fell, as they appeared to do, with great
rapidity; and that I had been surprised by the united
velocities of their descent and my own elevation.
By ten o'clock I found that I had very little to
occupy my immediate attention. Affairs went swimmingly, and I
believed the balloon to be going upward witb a speed increasing
momently although I had no longer any means of ascertaining the
progression of the increase. I suffered no pain or uneasiness
of any kind, and enjoyed better spirits than I had at any
period since my departure from Rotterdam, busying myself now in
examining the state of my various apparatus, and now in
regenerating the atmosphere within the chamber. This latter
point I determined to attend to at regular intervals of forty
minutes, more on account of the preservation of my health, than
from so frequent a renovation being absolutely necessary. In
the meanwhile I could not help making anticipations. Fancy
revelled in the wild and dreamy regions of the moon.
Imagination, feeling herself for once unshackled, roamed at
will among the ever-changing wonders of a shadowy and unstable
land. Now there were boary and time-honored forests, and craggy
precipices, and waterfalls tumbling with a loud noise into
abysses without a bottom. Then I came suddenly into still
noonday solitudes, where no wind of heaven ever intruded, and
where vast meadows of poppies, and slender, lily-looking
flowers spread themselves out a weary distance, all silent and
motionless forever. Then again I journeyed far down away into
another country where it was all one dim and vague lake, with a
boundary line of clouds. And out of this melancholy water arose
a forest of tall eastern trees, like a wilderness of dreams.
And I have in mind that the shadows of the trees which fell
upon the lake remained not on the surface where they fell, but
sunk slowly and steadily down, and commingled with the waves,
while from the trunks of the trees other shadows were
continually coming out, and taking the place of their brothers
thus entombed. "This then," I said thoughtfully, "is the very
reason why the waters of this lake grow blacker with age, and
more melancholy as the hours run on." But fancies such as these
were not the sole possessors of my brain. Horrors of a nature
most stern and most appalling would too frequently obtrude
themselves upon my mind, and shake the innermost depths of my
soul with the bare supposition of their possibility. Yet I
would not suffer my thoughts for any length of time to dwell
upon these latter speculations, rightly judging the real and
palpable dangers of the voyage sufficient for my undivided
attention.
At five o'clock, p.m., being engaged in
regenerating the atmosphere within the chamber, I took that
opportunity of observing the cat and kittens through the valve.
The cat herself appeared to suffer again very much, and I had
no hesitation in attributing her uneasiness chiefly to a
difficulty in breathing; but my experiment with the kittens had
resulted very strangely. I had expected, of course, to see them
betray a sense of pain, although in a less degree than their
mother, and this would have been sufficient to confirm my
opinion concerning the habitual endurance of atmospheric
pressure. But I was not prepared to find them, upon close
examination, evidently enjoying a high degree of health,
breathing with the greatest ease and perfect regularity, and
evincing not the slightest sign of any uneasiness whatever. I
could only account for all this by extending my theory, and
supposing that the highly rarefied atmosphere around might
perhaps not be, as I had taken for granted, chemically
insufficient for the purposes of life, and that a person born
in such a medium might, possibly, be unaware of any
inconvenience attending its inhalation, while, upon removal to
the denser strata near the earth, he might endure tortures of a
similar nature to those I had so lately experienced. It has
since been to me a matter of deep regret that an awkward
accident, at this time, occasioned me the loss of my little
family of cats, and deprived me of the insight into this matter
which a continued experiment might have afforded. In passing my
hand through the valve, with a cup of water for the old puss,
the sleeves of my shirt became entangled in the loop which
sustained the basket, and thus, in a moment, loosened it from
the bottom. Had the whole actually vanished into air, it could
not have shot from my sight in a more abrupt and instantaneous
manner. Positively, there could not have intervened the tenth
part of a second between the disengagement of the basket and
its absolute and total disappearance with all that it
contained. My good wishes followed it to the earth, but of
course, I had no hope that either cat or kittens would ever
live to tell the tale of their misfortune.
At six o'clock, I perceived a great portion of the
earth's visible area to the eastward involved in thick shadow,
which continued to advance with great rapidity, until, at five
minutes before seven, the whole surface in view was enveloped
in the darkness of night. It was not, however, until long after
this time that the rays of the setting sun ceased to illumine
the balloon; and this circumstance, although of course fully
anticipated, did not fail to give me an infinite deal of
pleasure. It was evident that, in the morning, I should behold
the rising luminary many hours at least before the citizens of
Rotterdam, in spite of their situation so much farther to the
eastward, and thus, day after day, in proportion to the height
ascended, would I enjoy the light of the sun for a longer and a
longer period. I now determined to keep a journal of my
passage, reckoning the days from one to twenty-four hours
continuously, without taking into consideration the intervals
of darkness.
At ten o'clock, feeling sleepy, I determined to
lie down for the rest of the night; but here a difficulty
presented itself, which, obvious as it may appear, had escaped
my attention up to the very moment of which I am now speaking.
If I went to sleep as I proposed, how could the atmosphere in
the chamber be regenerated in the interim? To breathe it for
more than an hour, at the farthest, would be a matter of
impossibility, or, if even this term could be extended to an
hour and a quarter, the most ruinous consequences might ensue.
The consideration of this dilemma gave me no little
disquietude; and it will hardly be believed, that, after the
dangers I had undergone, I should look upon this business in so
serious a light, as to give up all hope of accomplishing my
ultimate design, and finally make up my mind to the necessity
of a descent. But this hesitation was only momentary. I
reflected that man is the veriest slave of custom, and that
many points in the routine of his existence are deemed
essentially important, which are only so at all by his having
rendered them habitual. It was very certain that I could not do
without sleep; but I might easily bring myself to feel no
inconvenience from being awakened at intervals of an hour
during the whole period of my repose. It would require but five
minutes at most to regenerate the atmosphere in the fullest
manner, and the only real difficulty was to contrive a method
of arousing myself at the proper moment for so doing. But this
was a question which, I am willing to confess, occasioned me no
little trouble in its solution. To be sure, I had heard of the
student who, to prevent his falling asleep over his books, held
in one hand a ball of copper, the din of whose descent into a
basin of the same metal on the floor beside his chair, served
effectually to startle him up, if, at any moment, he should be
overcome with drowsiness. My own case, however, was very
different indeed, and left me no room for any similar idea; for
I did not wish to keep awake, but to be aroused from slumber at
regular intervals of time. I at length hit upon the following
expedient, which, simple as it may seem, was hailed by me, at
the moment of discovery, as an invention fully equal to that of
the telescope, the steam-engine, or the art of printing
itself.
It is necessary to premise, that the balloon, at
the elevation now attained, continued its course upward with an
even and undeviating ascent, and the car consequently followed
with a steadiness so perfect that it would have been impossible
to detect in it the slightest vacillation whatever. This
circumstance favored me greatly in the project I now determined
to adopt. My supply of water had been put on board in kegs
containing five gallons each, and ranged very securely around
the interior of the car. I unfastened one of these, and taking
two ropes tied them tightly across the rim of the wicker-work
from one side to the other; placing them about a foot apart and
parallel so as to form a kind of shelf, upon which I placed the
keg, and steadied it in a horizontal position. About eight
inches immediately below these ropes, and four feet from the
bottom of the car I fastened another shelf- but made of thin
plank, being the only similar piece of wood I had. Upon this
latter shelf, and exactly beneath one of the rims of the keg, a
small earthern pitcher was deposited. I now bored a hole in the
end of the keg over the pitcher, and fitted in a plug of soft
wood, cut in a tapering or conical shape. This plug I pushed in
or pulled out, as might happen, until, after a few experiments,
it arrived at that exact degree of tightness, at which the
water, oozing from the hole, and falling into the pitcher
below, would fill the latter to the brim in the period of sixty
minutes. This, of course, was a matter briefly and easily
ascertained, by noticing the proportion of the pitcher filled
in any given time. Having arranged all this, the rest of the
plan is obvious. My bed was so contrived upon the floor of the
car, as to bring my head, in lying down, immediately below the
mouth of the pitcher. It was evident, that, at the expiration
of an hour, the pitcher, getting full, would be forced to run
over, and to run over at the mouth, which was somewhat lower
than the rim. It was also evident, that the water thus falling
from a height of more than four feet, could not do otherwise
than fall upon my face, and that the sure consequences would
be, to waken me up instantaneously, even from the soundest
slumber in the world.
It was fully eleven by the time I had completed
these arrangements, and I immediately betook myself to bed,
with full confidence in the efficiency of my invention. Nor in
this matter was I disappointed. Punctually every sixty minutes
was I aroused by my trusty chronometer, when, having emptied
the pitcher into the bung-hole of the keg, and performed the
duties of the condenser, I retired again to bed. These regular
interruptions to my slumber caused me even less discomfort than
I had anticipated; and when I finally arose for the day, it was
seven o'clock, and the sun had attained many degrees above the
line of my horizon.
April 3d. I found the balloon at an immense height
indeed, and the earth's apparent convexity increased in a
material degree. Below me in the ocean lay a cluster of black
specks, which undoubtedly were islands. Far away to the
northward I perceived a thin, white, and exceedingly brilliant
line, or streak, on the edge of the horizon, and I had no
hesitation in supposing it to be the southern disk of the ices
of the Polar Sea. My curiosity was greatly excited, for I had
hopes of passing on much farther to the north, and might
possibly, at some period, find myself placed directly above the
Pole itself. I now lamented that my great elevation would, in
this case, prevent my taking as accurate a survey as I could
wish. Much, however, might be ascertained. Nothing else of an
extraordinary nature occurred during the day. My apparatus all
continued in good order, and the balloon still ascended without
any perceptible vacillation. The cold was intense, and obliged
me to wrap up closely in an overcoat. When darkness came over
the earth, I betook myself to bed, although it was for many
hours afterward broad daylight all around my immediate
situation. The water-clock was punctual in its duty, and I
slept until next morning soundly, with the exception of the
periodical interruption.
April 4th. Arose in good health and spirits, and
was astonished at the singular change which had taken place in
the appearance of the sea. It had lost, in a great measure, the
deep tint of blue it had hitherto worn, being now of a
grayish-white, and of a lustre dazzling to the eye. The islands
were no longer visible; whether they had passed down the
horizon to the southeast, or whether my increasing elevation
had left them out of sight, it is impossible to say. I was
inclined, however, to the latter opinion. The rim of ice to the
northward was growing more and more apparent. Cold by no means
so intense. Nothing of importance occurred, and I passed the
day in reading, having taken care to supply myself with
books.
April 5th. Beheld the singular phenomenon of the
sun rising while nearly the whole visible surface of the earth
continued to be involved in darkness. In time, however, the
light spread itself over all, and I again saw the line of ice
to the northward. It was now very distinct, and appeared of a
much darker hue than the waters of the ocean. I was evidently
approaching it, and with great rapidity. Fancied I could again
distinguish a strip of land to the eastward, and one also to
the westward, but could not be certain. Weather moderate.
Nothing of any consequence happened during the day. Went early
to bed.
April 6th. Was surprised at finding the rim of ice
at a very moderate distance, and an immense field of the same
material stretching away off to the horizon in the north. It
was evident that if the balloon held its present course, it
would soon arrive above the Frozen Ocean, and I had now little
doubt of ultimately seeing the Pole. During the whole of the
day I continued to near the ice. Toward night the limits of my
horizon very suddenly and materially increased, owing
undoubtedly to the earth's form being that of an oblate
spheroid, and my arriving above the flattened regions in the
vicinity of the Arctic circle. When darkness at length overtook
me, I went to bed in great anxiety, fearing to pass over the
object of so much curiosity when I should have no opportunity
of observing it.
April 7th. Arose early, and, to my great joy, at
length beheld what there could be no hesitation in supposing
the northern Pole itself. It was there, beyond a doubt, and
immediately beneath my feet; but, alas! I had now ascended to
so vast a distance, that nothing could with accuracy be
discerned. Indeed, to judge from the progression of the numbers
indicating my various altitudes, respectively, at different
periods, between six A.M. on the second of April, and twenty
minutes before nine A.M. of the same day (at which time the
barometer ran down), it might be fairly inferred that the
balloon had now, at four o'clock in the morning of April the
seventh, reached a height of not less, certainly, than 7,254
miles above the surface of the sea. This elevation may appear
immense, but the estimate upon which it is calculated gave a
result in all probability far inferior to the truth. At all
events I undoubtedly beheld the whole of the earth's major
diameter; the entire northern hemisphere lay beneath me like a
chart orthographically projected: and the great circle of the
equator itself formed the boundary line of my horizon. Your
Excellencies may, however, readily imagine that the confined
regions hitherto unexplored within the limits of the Arctic
circle, although situated directly beneath me, and therefore
seen without any appearance of being foreshortened, were still,
in themselves, comparatively too diminutive, and at too great a
distance from the point of sight, to admit of any very accurate
examination. Nevertheless, what could be seen was of a nature
singular and exciting. Northwardly from that huge rim before
mentioned, and which, with slight qualification, may be called
the limit of human discovery in these regions, one unbroken, or
nearly unbroken, sheet of ice continues to extend. In the first
few degrees of this its progress, its surface is very sensibly
flattened, farther on depressed into a plane, and finally,
becoming not a little concave, it terminates, at the Pole
itself, in a circular centre, sharply defined, wbose apparent
diameter subtended at the balloon an angle of about sixty-five
seconds, and whose dusky hue, varying in intensity, was, at all
times, darker than any other spot upon the visible hemisphere,
and occasionally deepened into the most absolute and
impenetrable blackness. Farther than this, little could be
ascertained. By twelve o'clock the circular centre had
materially decreased in circumference, and by seven P.M. I lost
sight of it entirely; the balloon passing over the western limb
of the ice, and floating away rapidly in the direction of the
equator.
April 8th. Found a sensible diminution in the
earth's apparent diameter, besides a material alteration in its
general color and appearance. The whole visible area partook in
different degrees of a tint of pale yellow, and in some
portions had acquired a brilliancy even painful to the eye. My
view downward was also considerably impeded by the dense
atmosphere in the vicinity of the surface being loaded with
clouds, between whose masses I could only now and then obtain a
glimpse of the earth itself. This difficulty of direct vision
had troubled me more or less for the last forty-eight hours;
but my present enormous elevation brought closer together, as
it were, the floating bodies of vapor, and the inconvenience
became, of course, more and more palpable in proportion to my
ascent. Nevertheless, I could easily perceive that the balloon
now hovered above the range of great lakes in the continent of
North America, and was holding a course, due south, which would
bring me to the tropics. This circumstance did not fail to give
me the most heartful satisfaction, and I hailed it as a happy
omen of ultimate success. Indeed, the direction I had hitherto
taken, had filled me with uneasiness; for it was evident that,
had I continued it much longer, there would have been no
possibility of my arriving at the moon at all, whose orbit is
inclined to the ecliptic at only the small angle of 5 degrees
8' 48".
April 9th. To-day the earth's diameter was greatly
diminished, and the color of the surface assumed hourly a
deeper tint of yellow. The balloon kept steadily on her course
to the southward, and arrived, at nine P.M., over the northern
edge of the Mexican Gulf.
April 10th. I was suddenly aroused from slumber,
about five o'clock this morning, by a loud, crackling, and
terrific sound, for which I could in no manner account. It was
of very brief duration, but, while it lasted resembled nothing
in the world of which I had any previous experience. It is
needless to say that I became excessively alarmed, having, in
the first instance, attributed the noise to the bursting of the
balloon. I examined all my apparatus, however, with great
attention, and could discover nothing out of order. Spent a
great part of the day in meditating upon an occurrence so
extraordinary, but could find no means whatever of accounting
for it. Went to bed dissatisfied, and in a state of great
anxiety and agitation.
April 11th. Found a startling diminution in the
apparent diameter of the earth, and a considerable increase,
now observable for the first time, in that of the moon itself,
which wanted only a few days of being full. It now required
long and excessive labor to condense within the chamber
sufficient atmospheric air for the sustenance of life.
April 12th. A singular alteration took place in
regard to the direction of the balloon, and although fully
anticipated, afforded me the most unequivocal delight. Having
reached, in its former course, about the twentieth parallel of
southern latitude, it turned off suddenly, at an acute angle,
to the eastward, and thus proceeded throughout the day, keeping
nearly, if not altogether, in the exact plane of the lunar
elipse. What was worthy of remark, a very perceptible
vacillation in the car was a consequence of this change of
route- a vacillation which prevailed, in a more or less degree,
for a period of many hours.
April 13th. Was again very much alarmed by a
repetition of the loud, crackling noise which terrified me on
the tenth. Thought long upon the subject, but was unable to
form any satisfactory conclusion. Great decrease in the earth's
apparent diameter, which now subtended from the balloon an
angle of very little more than twenty-five degrees. The moon
could not be seen at all, being nearly in my zenith. I still
continued in the plane of the elipse, but made little progress
to the eastward.
April 14th. Extremely rapid decrease in the
diameter of the earth. To-day I became strongly impressed with
the idea, that the balloon was now actually running up the line
of apsides to the point of perigee- in other words, holding the
direct course which would bring it immediately to the moon in
that part of its orbit the nearest to the earth. The moon iself
was directly overhead, and consequently hidden from my view.
Great and long-continued labor necessary for the condensation
of the atmosphere.
April 15th. Not even the outlines of continents
and seas could now be traced upon the earth with anything
approaching distinctness. About twelve o'clock I became aware,
for the third time, of that appalling sound which had so
astonished me before. It now, however, continued for some
moments, and gathered intensity as it continued. At length,
while, stupefied and terror-stricken, I stood in expectation of
I knew not what hideous destruction, the car vibrated with
excessive violence, and a gigantic and flaming mass of some
material which I could not distinguish, came with a voice of a
thousand thunders, roaring and booming by the balloon. When my
fears and astonishment had in some degree subsided, I had
little difficulty in supposing it to be some mighty volcanic
fragment ejected from that world to which I was so rapidly
approaching, and, in all probability, one of that singular
class of substances occasionally picked up on the earth, and
termed meteoric stones for want of a better appellation.
April 16th. To-day, looking upward as well as I
could, through each of the side windows alternately, I beheld,
to my great delight, a very small portion of the moon's disk
protruding, as it were, on all sides beyond the huge
circumference of the balloon. My agitation was extreme; for I
had now little doubt of soon reaching the end of my perilous
voyage. Indeed, the labor now required by the condenser had
increased to a most oppressive degree, and allowed me scarcely
any respite from exertion. Sleep was a matter nearly out of the
question. I became quite ill, and my frame trembled with
exhaustion. It was impossible that human nature could endure
this state of intense suffering much longer. During the now
brief interval of darkness a meteoric stone again passed in my
vicinity, and the frequency of these phenomena began to
occasion me much apprehension.
April 17th. This morning proved an epoch in my
voyage. It will be remembered that, on the thirteenth, the
earth subtended an angular breadth of twenty-five degrees. On
the fourteenth this had greatly diminished; on the fifteenth a
still more remarkable decrease was observable; and, on retiring
on the night of the sixteenth, I had noticed an angle of no
more than about seven degrees and fifteen minutes. What,
therefore, must have been my amazement, on awakening from a
brief and disturbed slumber, on the morning of this day, the
seventeenth, at finding the surface beneath me so suddenly and
wonderfully augmented in volume, as to subtend no less than
thirty-nine degrees in apparent angular diameter! I was
thunderstruck! No words can give any adequate idea of the
extreme, the absolute horror and astonishment, with which I was
seized possessed, and altogether overwhelmed. My knees tottered
beneath me- my teeth chattered- my hair started up on end. "The
balloon, then, had actually burst!" These were the first
tumultuous ideas that hurried through my mind: "The balloon had
positively burst!- I was falling- falling with the most
impetuous, the most unparalleled velocity! To judge by the
immense distance already so quickly passed over, it could not
be more than ten minutes, at the farthest, before I should meet
the surface of the earth, and be hurled into annihilation!" But
at length reflection came to my relief. I paused; I considered;
and I began to doubt. The matter was impossible. I could not in
any reason have so rapidly come down. Besides, although I was
evidently approaching the surface below me, it was with a speed
by no means commensurate with the velocity I had at first so
horribly conceived. This consideration served to calm the
perturbation of my mind, and I finally succeeded in regarding
the phenomenon in its proper point of view. In fact, amazement
must have fairly deprived me of my senses, when I could not see
the vast difference, in appearance, between the surface below
me, and the surface of my mother earth. The latter was indeed
over my head, and completely hidden by the balloon, while the
moon- the moon itself in all its glory- lay beneath me, and at
my feet.
The stupor and surprise produced in my mind by
this extraordinary change in the posture of affairs was
perhaps, after all, that part of the adventure least
susceptible of explanation. For the bouleversement in itself
was not only natural and inevitable, but had been long actually
anticipated as a circumstance to be expected whenever I should
arrive at that exact point of my voyage where the attraction of
the planet should be superseded by the attraction of the
satellite- or, more precisely, where the gravitation of the
balloon toward the earth should be less powerful than its
gravitation toward the moon. To be sure I arose from a sound
slumber, with all my senses in confusion, to the contemplation
of a very startling phenomenon, and one which, although
expected, was not expected at the moment. The revolution itself
must, of course, have taken place in an easy and gradual
manner, and it is by no means clear that, had I even been awake
at the time of the occurrence, I should have been made aware of
it by any internal evidence of an inversion- that is to say, by
any inconvenience or disarrangement, either about my person or
about my apparatus.
It is almost needless to say that, upon coming to
a due sense of my situation, and emerging from the terror which
had absorbed every faculty of my soul, my attention was, in the
first place, wholly directed to the contemplation of the
general physical appearance of the moon. It lay beneath me like
a chart- and although I judged it to be still at no
inconsiderable distance, the indentures of its surface were
defined to my vision with a most striking and altogether
unaccountable distinctness. The entire absence of ocean or sea,
and indeed of any lake or river, or body of water whatsoever,
struck me, at first glance, as the most extraordinary feature
in its geological condition. Yet, strange to say, I beheld vast
level regions of a character decidedly alluvial, although by
far the greater portion of the hemisphere in sight was covered
with innumerable volcanic mountains, conical in shape, and
having more the appearance of artificial than of natural
protuberance. The highest among them does not exceed three and
three-quarter miles in perpendicular elevation; but a map of
the volcanic districts of the Campi Phlegraei would afford to
your Excellencies a better idea of their general surface than
any unworthy description I might think proper to attempt. The
greater part of them were in a state of evident eruption, and
gave me fearfully to understand their fury and their power, by
the repeated thunders of the miscalled meteoric stones, which
now rushed upward by the balloon with a frequency more and more
appalling.
April 18th. To-day I found an enormous increase in
the moon's apparent bulk- and the evidently accelerated
velocity of my descent began to fill me with alarm. It will be
remembered, that, in the earliest stage of my speculations upon
the possibility of a passage to the moon, the existence, in its
vicinity, of an atmosphere, dense in proportion to the bulk of
the planet, had entered largely into my calculations; this too
in spite of many theories to the contrary, and, it may be
added, in spite of a general disbelief in the existence of any
lunar atmosphere at all. But, in addition to what I have
already urged in regard to Encke's comet and the zodiacal
light, I had been strengthened in my opinion by certain
observations of Mr. Schroeter, of Lilienthal. He observed the
moon when two days and a half old, in the evening soon after
sunset, before the dark part was visible, and continued to
watch it until it became visible. The two cusps appeared
tapering in a very sharp faint prolongation, each exhibiting
its farthest extremity faintly illuminated by the solar rays,
before any part of the dark hemisphere was visible. Soon
afterward, the whole dark limb became illuminated. This
prolongation of the cusps beyond the semicircle, I thought,
must have arisen from the refraction of the sun's rays by the
moon's atmosphere. I computed, also, the height of the
atmosphere (which could refract light enough into its dark
hemisphere to produce a twilight more luminous than the light
reflected from the earth when the moon is about 32 degrees from
the new) to be 1,356 Paris feet; in this view, I supposed the
greatest height capable of refracting the solar ray, to be
5,376 feet. My ideas on this topic had also received
confirmation by a passage in the eighty-second volume of the
Philosophical Transactions, in which it is stated that at an
occultation of Jupiter's satellites, the third disappeared
after having been about 1" or 2" of time indistinct, and the
fourth became indiscernible near the limb.*
*Havelius writes that he has several times found, in skies perfectly clear, when even stars of the sixth and seventh magnitude were conspicuous, that, at the same altitude of the moon, at the same elongation from the earth, and with one and the same excellent telescope, the moon and its maculae did not appear equally lucid at all times. From the circumstances of the observation, it is evident that the cause of this phenomenon is not either in our air, in the tube, in the moon, or in the eye of the spectator, but must be looked for in something (an atmosphere?) existing about the moon.
Cassini frequently observed Saturn, Jupiter, and the fixed stars, when approaching the moon to occultation, to have their circular figure changed into an oval one; and, in other occultations, he found no alteration of figure at all. Hence it might be supposed, that at some times and not at others, there is a dense matter encompassing the moon wherein the rays of the stars are refracted.
Upon the resistance or, more properly, upon the
support of an atmosphere, existing in the state of density
imagined, I had, of course, entirely depended for the safety of
my ultimate descent. Should I then, after all, prove to have
been mistaken, I had in consequence nothing better to expect,
as a finale to my adventure, than being dashed into atoms
against the rugged surface of the satellite. And, indeed, I had
now every reason to be terrified. My distance from the moon was
comparatively trifling, while the labor required by the
condenser was diminished not at all, and I could discover no
indication whatever of a decreasing rarity in the air.
April 19th. This morning, to my great joy, about
nine o'clock, the surface of the moon being frightfully near,
and my apprehensions excited to the utmost, the pump of my
condenser at length gave evident tokens of an alteration in the
atmosphere. By ten, I had reason to believe its density
considerably increased. By eleven, very little labor was
necessary at the apparatus; and at twelve o'clock, with some
hesitation, I ventured to unscrew the tourniquet, when, finding
no inconvenience from having done so, I finally threw open the
gum-elastic chamber, and unrigged it from around the car. As
might have been expected, spasms and violent headache were the
immediate consequences of an experiment so precipitate and full
of danger. But these and other difficulties attending
respiration, as they were by no means so great as to put me in
peril of my life, I determined to endure as I best could, in
consideration of my leaving them behind me momently in my
approach to the denser strata near the moon. This approach,
however, was still impetuous in the extreme; and it soon became
alarmingly certain that, although I had probably not been
deceived in the expectation of an atmosphere dense in
proportion to the mass of the satellite, still I had been wrong
in supposing this density, even at the surface, at all adequate
to the support of the great weight contained in the car of my
balloon. Yet this should have been the case, and in an equal
degree as at the surface of the earth, the actual gravity of
bodies at either planet supposed in the ratio of the
atmospheric condensation. That it was not the case, however, my
precipitous downfall gave testimony enough; why it was not so,
can only be explained by a reference to those possible
geological disturbances to which I have formerly alluded. At
all events I was now close upon the planet, and coming down
with the most terrible impetuosity. I lost not a moment,
accordingly, in throwing overboard first my ballast, then my
water-kegs, then my condensing apparatus and gum-elastic
chamber, and finally every article within the car. But it was
all to no purpose. I still fell with horrible rapidity, and was
now not more than half a mile from the surface. As a last
resource, therefore, having got rid of my coat, hat, and boots,
I cut loose from the balloon the car itself, which was of no
inconsiderable weight, and thus, clinging with both hands to
the net-work, I had barely time to observe that the whole
country, as far as the eye could reach, was thickly
interspersed with diminutive habitations, ere I tumbled
headlong into the very heart of a fantastical-looking city, and
into the middle of a vast crowd of ugly little people, who none
of them uttered a single syllable, or gave themselves the least
trouble to render me assistance, but stood, like a parcel of
idiots, grinning in a ludicrous manner, and eyeing me and my
balloon askant, with their arms set a-kimbo. I turned from them
in contempt, and, gazing upward at the earth so lately left,
and left perhaps for ever, beheld it like a huge, dull, copper
shield, about two degrees in diameter, fixed immovably in the
heavens overhead, and tipped on one of its edges with a
crescent border of the most brilliant gold. No traces of land
or water could be discovered, and the whole was clouded with
variable spots, and belted with tropical and equatorial
zones.
Thus, may it please your Excellencies, after a
series of great anxieties, unheard of dangers, and unparalleled
escapes, I had, at length, on the nineteenth day of my
departure from Rotterdam, arrived in safety at the conclusion
of a voyage undoubtedly the most extraordinary, and the most
momentous, ever accomplished, undertaken, or conceived by any
denizen of earth. But my adventures yet remain to be related.
And indeed your Excellencies may well imagine that, after a
residence of five years upon a planet not only deeply
interesting in its own peculiar character, but rendered doubly
so by its intimate connection, in capacity of satellite, with
the world inhabited by man, I may have intelligence for the
private ear of the States' College of Astronomers of far more
importance than the details, however wonderful, of the mere
voyage which so happily concluded. This is, in fact, the case.
I have much- very much which it would give me the greatest
pleasure to communicate. I have much to say of the climate of
the planet; of its wonderful alternations of heat and cold, of
unmitigated and burning sunshine for one fortnight, and more
than polar frigidity for the next; of a constant transfer of
moisture, by distillation like that in vacuo, from the point
beneath the sun to the point the farthest from it; of a
variable zone of running water, of the people themselves; of
their manners, customs, and political institutions; of their
peculiar physical construction; of their ugliness; of their
want of ears, those useless appendages in an atmosphere so
peculiarly modified; of their consequent ignorance of the use
and properties of speech; of their substitute for speech in a
singular method of inter-communication; of the incomprehensible
connection between each particular individual in the moon with
some particular individual on the earth- a connection analogous
with, and depending upon, that of the orbs of the planet and
the satellites, and by means of which the lives and destinies
of the inhabitants of the one are interwoven with the lives and
destinies of the inhabitants of the other; and above all, if it
so please your Excellencies- above all, of those dark and
hideous mysteries which lie in the outer regions of the moon-
regions which, owing to the almost miraculous accordance of the
satellite's rotation on its own axis with its sidereal
revolution about the earth, have never yet been turned, and, by
God's mercy, never shall be turned, to the scrutiny of the
telescopes of man. All this, and more- much more- would I most
willingly detail. But, to be brief, I must have my reward. I am
pining for a return to my family and to my home, and as the
price of any farther communication on my part- in consideration
of the light which I have it in my power to throw upon many
very important branches of physical and metaphysical science- I
must solicit, through the influence of your honorable body, a
pardon for the crime of which I have been guilty in the death
of the creditors upon my departure from Rotterdam. This, then,
is the object of the present paper. Its bearer, an inhabitant
of the moon, whom I have prevailed upon, and properly
instructed, to be my messenger to the earth, will await your
Excellencies' pleasure, and return to me with the pardon in
question, if it can, in any manner, be obtained.
I have the honor to be, etc., your Excellencies'
very humble servant,
HANS PHAALL.
Upon finishing the perusal of this very
extraordinary document, Professor Rub-a-dub, it is said,
dropped his pipe upon the ground in the extremity of his
surprise, and Mynheer Superbus Von Underduk having taken off
his spectacles, wiped them, and deposited them in his pocket,
so far forgot both himself and his dignity, as to turn round
three times upon his heel in the quintessence of astonishment
and admiration. There was no doubt about the matter- the pardon
should be obtained. So at least swore, with a round oath,
Professor Rub-a-dub, and so finally thought the illustrious Von
Underduk, as he took the arm of his brother in science, and
without saying a word, began to make the best of his way home
to deliberate upon the measures to be adopted. Having reached
the door, however, of the burgomaster's dwelling, the professor
ventured to suggest that as the messenger had thought proper to
disappear- no doubt frightened to death by the savage
appearance of the burghers of Rotterdam- the pardon would be of
little use, as no one but a man of the moon would undertake a
voyage to so vast a distance. To the truth of this observation
the burgomaster assented, and the matter was therefore at an
end. Not so, however, rumors and speculations. The letter,
having been published, gave rise to a variety of gossip and
opinion. Some of the over-wise even made themselves ridiculous
by decrying the whole business; as nothing better than a hoax.
But hoax, with these sort of people, is, I believe, a general
term for all matters above their comprehension. For my part, I
cannot conceive upon what data they have founded such an
accusation. Let us see what they say:
Imprimus. That certain wags in Rotterdam have
certain especial antipathies to certain burgomasters and
astronomers.
Don't understand at all.
Secondly. That an odd little dwarf and bottle
conjurer, both of whose ears, for some misdemeanor, have been
cut off close to his head, has been missing for several days
from the neighboring city of Bruges.
Well- what of that?
Thirdly. That the newspapers which were stuck all
over the little balloon were newspapers of Holland, and
therefore could not have been made in the moon. They were dirty
papers- very dirty- and Gluck, the printer, would take his
Bible oath to their having been printed in Rotterdam.
He was mistaken- undoubtedly- mistaken.
Fourthly, That Hans Phaall himself, the druken
villain, and the three very idle gentlemen styled his
creditors, were all seen, no longer than two or three days ago,
in a tippling house in the suburbs, having just returned, with
money in their pockets, from a trip beyond the sea.
Don't believe it- don't believe a word of it.
Lastly. That it is an opinion very generally
received, or which ought to be generally received, that the
College of Astronomers in the city of Rotterdam, as well as
other colleges in all other parts of the world,- not to mention
colleges and astronomers in general,- are, to say the least of
the matter, not a whit better, nor greater, nor wiser than they
ought to be.